Disconnected
by Sparrowinsky
Summary: Eight reactions to Zoey's disappearance. (Chapter Three: Josh)
1. Two Speeches: Will

Disclaimer: If only.   
Title: Disconnected   
Chapter 1: Two Speeches/Will   
  
Zoey's gone and the President's a Republican and the world has gone insane, and he should be writing a speech- two speeches- but he's here anyway, getting as drunk as is humanly possible.   
  
It seems somehow like it should be someone else doing this. It seems like it is.   
  
There's a girl at the next table he thinks has been watching him- he meets her eyes and thinks of Sam. His predecessor. Non-dead predecessor. He knows there's another word for it but he's too drunk to remember and doesn't really care anyway.   
  
Three drinks later and she's at his table. Their discussion borders on a fight, but half the time he's not sure what they're talking about, or why he's arguing with a girl he's only just met. Now she makes him think of Zoey, and why he's not as scared as he should be.   
  
He's not too coherent tonight, so he thinks that maybe not remembering how they got from an argument to a bed is forgivable. Or it would be, except for the way she looks at him every time he calls a name, different names, not hers. Sad.   
  
It's quick, less sex than pure release. Except that after, he's not relaxed, he's scared, worried, tense, everything that he should have been before and wasn't.   
  
The girl is dressed and at the door when he remembers he doesn't know her name, and asks.   
  
"Kay," she says, and smiles. He asks again, and she looks at him a long time before answering.   
  
"Oscatt." And then she's gone.   
  
The hotel room has a kitchenette, so he makes himself breakfast. He's halfway done when inspiration hits.   
  
By the time the maid gets there, embarrased at telling a half-naked man he has to leave, that the woman who rented the room has checked out, he's finished the speeches he thought he couldn't write.   
  
Toby will hate them, he thinks, but they're done.   
  
For the rest of the day, he's back to...not unfeeling, but not-feeling. Except...   
  
Whenever he thinks about the speeches, he thinks of Sam, and of Zoey, and wonders why he can't remember Kay's face. 


	2. Late News: Sam

Disclaimer: If only.   
Title: Disconnected   
Chapter 2: Late News/Sam   
  
  
It should have been Josh.   
  
It wasn't, and I don't understand why. Even if Donna had called, or Toby, or CJ- I'd have understood. But Will called. The day after. And it was Will   
  
I like Will, I do, he's nice, he's great, but he's not family, my family didn't call. Josh didn't call.   
  
I had to find out from the news.   
  
The _news._   
  
They should have called me.   
  
It only takes fifteen minutes to pack, less if I don't care about being neat- I don't- and I could be gone. I don't know how I'd get there, but I know I should be there, and I know I won't go. I won't go because there's a Republican in the White House, because I'm not needed, because thinking about the President and the First Lady makes my chest feel as if it's caved in.   
  
I won't go, because I'm not really wanted.   
  
Josh will call soon. When he remembers. I almost hope before it's over, but if he calls soon and calls after it's over than it will be over soon. Twisted logic, naive logic, Sam logic...   
  
Josh will call, and want to know why I didn't come, why I didn't come back to my family in the worst time of our lives. Their lives.   
  
I can't tell him that I would have come, if only he'd called, if only someone had. If it was him on the phone, not Will, who I can tell is drunk. He reads two speeches to me, slurring the words well past coherency. He reads me the speeches I would have written. It's a breach of security but I don't care, and he doesn't remember, and for all I wish they were mine and for all that I should be the one helping Josh argue with whoever he's arguing with...the speeches are good. Very good. Poignant.   
  
He has to leave, he says, after he finishes the second, and I tell him that they're good, and tell Josh- no, not Josh. Tell Donna that I know. That I was called. That I'm sorry, and I miss them, all of them.   
  
After he hangs up, I throw up. It's a full half-hour before I can leave the bathroom, to unpack the clothes I'd been tossing into a suitcase. They're clean but they go in the hamper anyway, too tired to fold them or put them away. Suitcase, tossed back in the closet.   
  
I turn off the tv and sit down to write my own two speeches. 


	3. Perspective: Josh

Disclaimer: If only.   
Title: Disconnected   
Chapter 3: Perspective/Josh   
  
It's his fault. Somehow, it's his fault. His and Charlie's and god, all he wants to do is kill that French sonuvabitch, slam his head against a wall until his eyes bleed out, even if the thought makes his stomach flip. Jean-Paul fuck-you. And fuck them, Leo and Bartlett and Walken and democrats and republicans and French and Americans and Arabs. Zoey.   
  
He feels like he's going to puke. It's a wonder he can argue with these people, these stupid pointless people, when he feels as if the world is collapsing around him and his insides are like an Escher drawing, heart and lungs and guts inside out and upside down.   
  
He's sure that there's a lesson in this somewhere. There's a moral to this story (because every happy ending has a moral and this has to end as well as it can, because if Zoey dies then Bartlett will no longer be President and the world, his world, his family will die.).   
  
He wonders if he can discover it before the world is completely gone.   
  
  
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WOOT! *does the Happy Author Dance* I love feedback. It just gives warm fuzzies, y'know?   
  
Cait: Well, I already have the sequence planned out- but lucky for you, Josh was indeed next. (It's Toby after this, if anyone's curious.)   
AEM1: I've never had anyone that enamored with one of my stories before. *grins* Will's will probably one of the more in-depth chapters of this story; Sam and Toby come in second. The first chapter was a gift to a Will-fangirl friend of mine, and Sam was a response to a challenge by the same friend- how does Sam react to the Zoey Mess? 


End file.
